NOAA
26 articles

Less than a month into the 2017 Atlantic hurricane season and AL.com reports that Tropical Storm Cindy already has the U.S. Gulf Coast in its crosshairs. Weather experts predict the season will be unusually active, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. That means power outages could become frequent, driving many to rely on backup power sources, such as portable generators. While incredibly useful for providing temporary electrical power, these gas or diesel-powered devices can also be harmful if not used properly. A 2013 report by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) shows that generators were linked to ... Read More

Top White House officials manipulated the scientific findings of independent experts to “seriously lowball the amount of oil leaking from the BP Deepwater Horizon,” according to a group of federal, state, and municipal employees. Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), a national alliance of publicly employed scientists, law enforcement authorities, land managers, and other professionals dedicated to upholding U.S. environmental laws and values, filed a scientific integrity complaint Monday after reviewing documents it obtained through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit. According to PEER, the documents, which include a series of high-level emails, “indicate White House pressure to present low-range ... Read More

Not long after the Deepwater Horizon exploded on April 20, 2010, people in the coastal areas of Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Florida began complaining of respiratory irritation, headaches, dizziness, and other symptoms they believe were linked to the noxious fumes of the BP oil spill. Now a new government report about the pollution emitted from the spill and the attempts to clean it up may support such claims. As millions of gallons of oil spread out over the Gulf of Mexico, cleanup crews moved in to try to contain the mess. One of the methods they used in an effort ... Read More

When Bonny Schumaker flew her small plane over the Gulf of Mexico to conduct a survey of whale sharks, her search instead turned up a massive oil slick that stretched for miles on the surface. The oil appeared to be emanating from the exact site of BP’s blown-out Macondo well, which gushed oil for months and created the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history. Alarmed, Ms. Schumaker, a former NASA scientist and founder of the organization On Wings of Care, contacted the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the U.S. Coast Guard with exact coordinates. She even had aerial ... Read More

BP’s oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico was successfully capped a year ago, but hundreds of miles of Gulf coast beaches and marshlands are still contaminated by oil from the blown-out Macondo well. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), oil ranging in form from sticky crude to a light sheen covers about 491 miles of Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, and Mississippi coastline. Approximately 1,100 miles of coast have been covered with oil since BP’s Deepwater Horizon platform exploded April 20, 2010. Tim Zink, an NOAA spokesman, told Bloomberg that several miles of the Louisiana coast and marsh ... Read More

Unusually high numbers of dolphins have been washing ashore in Alabama and other Gulf states since BP’s offshore rig exploded and sank in the Gulf of Mexico a year ago, creating the biggest oil spill and environmental catastrophe the United States has ever seen. Now, despite a government order to keep their findings confidential, scientists examining the dolphins have linked many of their deaths to the massive oil spill. Estimates of the number of dolphins killed by the spill have varied wildly since BP’s blown-out well started gushing oil between April 20-22 last year, but scientists have focused primarily on ... Read More

Louisiana state and Plaquemines Parish officials took journalists on a tour of Barataria Bay last week to showcase how oily sludge from BP’s Gulf spill is being covered up and neglected in this and other ecologically sensitive areas of the state’s coastline. Nearly nine months after BP’s Deepwater Horizon offshore platform exploded and sank, oil continues to pass Louisiana’s barrier islands and accumulate in its wetlands and marshes. The affected areas help protect the state from hurricanes and serve as breeding grounds for a spectrum or marine and terrestrial life on which the ecology and economy of Louisiana depends. But ... Read More

Oceanographers and scientists have been warning that only time will reveal how much damage BP’s massive oil spill and its use of chemical oil dispersants in the Gulf of Mexico have done to the environment and marine ecology. This week a troubling sign has emerged in the form of an astonishingly large mass of floating dead fish just west of the Mississippi River in Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana. Masses of dead fish surfacing in the Gulf of Mexico are unfortunately common events, especially near the mouth of the Mississippi River where oxygen-depleted dead zones created by miles of fertilizer runoff frequently choke ... Read More

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s newly released fisheries report finds New Bedford, Massachusetts, and Dutch Harbor-Unalaska, Alaska, remaining at the top in 2009 for value and amount of fish landed, but the inclusion of several Gulf fisheries among last year’s top ten underscores just how much was lost in 2010 – for both the Gulf Coast and the national economy as a whole — in the wake of BP’s oil spill. The “Fisheries of the United States 2009” report shows New Bedford’s port brought in more than $249 million of fish that year, with an increase of 23.6 million ... Read More

New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu told an audience at the National Press Club in Washington D.C. on Thursday that he lacks faith in BP and doesn’t trust the company to do the right thing in the aftermath of the oil spill. The journalism organization invited Mr. Landrieu to speak about the progress New Orleans is making with its rebuilding efforts on the fifth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina and about the effects the oil spill continues to have on his city. Landrieu criticized BP’s cleanup efforts in the Gulf, telling the Press Club, “In my opinion, they’re poised to cut and ... Read More

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